Anyone read the article on losses in the WWII Pacific Theater in the july issues of Armchair General? Thoughts?

Navarone

25 Jun 06, 13:12

I can't say I have. What was the gist of it?

rahamy

26 Jun 06, 12:53

Debunking the myth that McArthur's campaigns in the Pacfic were less blody than those conducted by Nimitz.

Navarone

26 Jun 06, 13:04

Interesting. As usual the question is "What casualties are they counting?"

Usually, the pro-Mac camp erroniously compares his US casualties to Nimitz's US casualties, leaving out Australian casualties from the New Guinea Campaign. Apologies to all residents of Oz. Typical parochialism.

However the Pro-Nimitz camp usually includes the casualties from the Luzon 41-42 Campaign, which in my opinion is also faulty math. To count casualties inflicted during the initial Japanese offensive and counting them as blood spent during the American counteroffensive is a bit of sleight of hand, if you ask me. And there were a LOT of them; yes some US but MANY MANY more Filipino troops, usually counted in the US total as they were under Mac's USAFFE command.

It's a paper unto itself, but even while adding in Australian casualties, Mac was able to isolate or destroy far more Japanese troops per US casualty than was the case in Nimitz's Central Pacific Campaign. The Japanese always saw Mac's Campaign as the greater threat since it directly threatened the natural resources which they entered into war against the US, Dutch and UK for in the first place. The benefit of Nimitz's offensive (use of island bases from which to bomb Japan) was always seen by the Japanese Army and Naval Staffs as a painful, but not unbearable threat to their war effort.

Ultimately, I believe that one campaign would not have been successful without the other. 2 Westward axes of advance forced the Japanese to counter two threats.